Anna Karenina eBook

“Oh, no!” Vronsky said, seeming to understand
him with difficulty. “If you don’t
mind, let’s walk on. It’s so stuffy
among the carriages. A letter? No, thank
you; to meet death one needs no letters of introduction.
Nor for the Turks...” he said, with a smile
that was merely of the lips. His eyes still kept
their look of angry suffering.

“Yes; but you might find it easier to get into
relations, which are after all essential, with anyone
prepared to see you. But that’s as you
like. I was very glad to hear of your intention.
There have been so many attacks made on the volunteers,
and a man like you raises them in public estimation.”

“My use as a man,” said Vronsky, “is
that life’s worth nothing to me. And that
I’ve enough bodily energy to cut my way into
their ranks, and to trample on them or fall—­I
know that. I’m glad there’s something
to give my life for, for it’s not simply useless
but loathsome to me. Anyone’s welcome to
it.” And his jaw twitched impatiently
from the incessant gnawing toothache, that prevented
him from even speaking with a natural expression.

“You will become another man, I predict,”
said Sergey Ivanovitch, feeling touched. “To
deliver one’s brother-men from bondage is an
aim worth death and life. God grant you success
outwardly—­and inwardly peace,” he
added, and he held out his hand. Vronsky warmly
pressed his outstretched hand.

“Yes, as a weapon I may be of some use.
But as a man, I’m a wreck,” he jerked
out.

He could hardly speak for the throbbing ache in his
strong teeth, that were like rows of ivory in his
mouth. He was silent, and his eyes rested on
the wheels of the tender, slowly and smoothly rolling
along the rails.

And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but
an inner trouble, that set his whole being in anguish,
made him for an instant forget his toothache.
As he glanced at the tender and the rails, under
the influence of the conversation with a friend he
had not met since his misfortune, he suddenly recalled
her—­that is, what was left of her
when he had run like one distraught into the cloak
room of the railway station—­on the table,
shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the bloodstained
body so lately full of life; the head unhurt dropping
back with its weight of hair, and the curling tresses
about the temples, and the exquisite face, with red,
half-opened mouth, the strange, fixed expression,
piteous on the lips and awful in the still open eyes,
that seemed to utter that fearful phrase—­that
he would be sorry for it—­that she had said
when they were quarreling.

And he tried to think of her as she was when he met
her the first time, at a railway station too, mysterious,
exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and
not cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that
last moment. He tried to recall his best moments
with her, but those moments were poisoned forever.
He could only think of her as triumphant, successful
in her menace of a wholly useless remorse never to
be effaced. He lost all consciousness of toothache,
and his face worked with sobs.